Hi,

I have learned David Roth's coins across on vol. 1 and have been able to put a good presentation together but I don't seem to get any good reactions from it. I try to make it as clear cut as possible to them what I am doing and apparently do everything right but the reaction I achieve is not the same as when I saw David Roth do it for the first time.....

Do you have any suggestions how to help?

McGroo

When you do the 'thumb wiggle' or the 'faxing' line...
you could look at the receiving hand and react to the coin appearance. THEN put down the coins in the 'sending' hand and continue to keep attention on the coin that appeared.

RE: "but the reaction I achieve is not the same as when I saw David Roth do it for the first time"

It's going to be challenging to get a reaction like David Roth gets... he gets the same or stronger reactions when he performs for other magicians, who have a pretty fair idea of what he's doing, because he does it so well.

Jonathan gave you excellent advice. Build up to the event, and then focus your (and their) attention on it before moving on. I might also mention that there are many aspects to magic, beyond the mechanics of a particular effect. In ECMME video series, David does not delve too deeply into teaching the intangible parts, such as patter, routining, proper use of misdirection, etc. He primarily focuses on the sleights and the effects done with those sleights. You may consider your "game face" and presentation skills when you look to improve your audience reactions.

A short book that I recently read that does a good job of getting you to think about those aspects is "Beyond Secrets" by Jay Sankey. There are many other reference sources available as well, so if Jay is not your cup of tea, I'm sure you'll find someone who is.

All the Best,

Mike

You may try using your own presentation...sometimes something that is brilliant in another's hands will not play right in your own...

To me, coins across is a terrible trick. Don't get me wrong, I perform it all of the time (Gary Kurtz's Trio in Three), but it's not one of those tricks that can just be done as a trick alone (if that makes sense). Allow me to explain, in an ambitious card, laymen think it is so amazing that the card can come back to the top so many times. It doesn't need patter because the reaction is built on the trick alone. Unfortunately, coins across doesn't have that quality. It needs patter and story to make it interesting. After the second coin, people start to think, great they can go across. By the last coin, they don't care anymore. So you have to have a story and (to me at least) a great kicker ending like all 3 or 4 coins going across at once or the coins traveling back at once, something to make the trick look more magical than just going across.

This is my opinion on the trick, I know that people have gotten good reactions out of the trick alone, but most of the time you won't get the reaction you want.

Check out Sankey's Mr. Clean Coins Across. It's just three coins and its quick. The great thing about his routines is that the spectators think your hands are clean each time. I get great reactions from a variation I do of Sankey's routine.

Don't we have other routines besides matrix and 3 flys?
Every time I see a magician doing coin magic all they do is a coin roll followed by 3 fly and some sort of coins across.
Don't get me wrong it just seems every one is doing these effects.
I guess I got spoiled seeing Mickey Silver with his fresh new ideas.
Vinny

Based on audience reaction, coins across to spectator's hand is one of the strongest effects I perform, and curiously, my presentation is much more expository than the presentations I use in other effects. I do use some humorous lines (not a story), but my presentation isn't as well-developed as I'd like it to be. When I perform the effect, there's no reason that the coins go across other than the fact that they can, and I generally hate that type of magic but it's hard to argue with how strongly the effect plays for me.

David, re. your statement that "...people start to think, great they can go across. By the last coin, they don't care anymore...", I haven't found that to be true when I perform the effect. "Anticipation" can be used to strengthen versus weaken this and other effects. In this effect, I use anticipation to my advantage by making each coin's transfer appear even more impossible than the last coin's transfer.

Vinny, I get excited when I see new and different presentations, but for laymen who haven't seen good close-up magic (which is the vast majority of laymen), everything, including classics, is new to them.

Larry D.

The weakness with most Coins Across routines is the fact that the same steps are being repeated over and over again. Ambitious Card has very different methods, some more visual than others, which hold the audience's attention. However, something like coins across, nothing different ever happens. This is the routine's weakness.

If the same steps are being repeated over and over again, that's only because the magician is choosing to perform it that way, not because the effect has to be performed that way. As I mentioned earlier, each successive coin transfer can be made to appear more impossible than the last.

Exactly, that's why I think that there should be coins going back and forth and all at once or whatever. The trick gets more interesting.

Larry, I understand what you are saying about anticipation. That may work for you, but it doesn't for me. I really think that just the coins going across does get boring and changing the routine around seems to work for me. Coin across to the spectators hand like you said, is very strong. Trio In Three has that and that is one of the best parts for the audience whenever I perform it. The trick changed and happened in their hands instead of just watching them go across one after the other.

The reactions for any magic is based on the presentation. The magic is secondary to the personality of the performer. I would look at your presentation and make sure that the patter is good and that the jokes and everything are timed right. The best thing to do is have another magician watch you in a live performance. You would be suprised at how much a outsider will see that needs fixing. To this day I have a couple of close friends that I have watch my show and my bar act. They give me great advise that helps with everything. This is just my opinion. And it has worked for me.........

tpdmagic

Just this friday I did deja flew (Harbottle's coins across) and I found the reactions excellent.

Harbottle set up the routine excellently, just like Larry said, making each tansposition more impossible than the next.

If you are doing the same move over and over again, then of course the audience gets bored, they want to be entertained, not hit over the head with the same move over and over again..

I mean in ambitious card, if all you did was say a double lift, and a marlo tilt, that would be boring pretty quick.

Perhaps it is time to look at a new coins across routine, if all you are doing is the same move, over and over again.

Also with Trio in Three (Now if memory serves that is Gary's version of VCA isn't it?) it is a routine showing the magician in a position of power, being able to move coins from one hand to another, but their is no interaction with the audience, other than they watch and listen to the magician talk to them.

With coins across, (not Visible Coins Across) the audience has more interaction and can enjoy the routine more.

(plus as a side note, Harbottle's deja flew on Friday alone made me over thirty dollars in tips. No beggin, just people would come over to me after and mention that they loved that coin trick I did for them, and then slip some money in my pocket. Thank you Kainoa, your book has now paid for itself.)

I agree, variety is the key. I do a version of Daryl's Indian Cross (essentially a coins across with 6 coins, only three of which travel and land on the CU mat). I vary the method of travel for the first two coins, but for the last one, I do a retention vanish, draw the attention to the hand "holding" the coin as I secretly place the coin down on the mat with the "retaining" hand. I then show both hands empty in the air, and gesture down to the mat, where the spectator is suprised to find the last coin. A very powerful ending which elicits much profanity.

The point is coins across or Am. Card (or a coin flurry) is repetitive. It's up to the magician to keep one step ahead by changing the method and routine right before the spectator starts to expect the next move.

Thanks for the post.

I have a few question for you.

How long did you practice this before adding it to your program?

How long did you rehearse this as part of a routine.

and finally?

How long has this been in your program?

Some nearly normal suggestions.

1. Slow down.
2. Look at your audience not just at your hands.
3. Check out POS 2 for a nice kicker to coins across.
4. Use a production/change kicker based on the (see thread )
answer to "Why did the coin cross the road?"
a. This could be production of a small rubber chicken
b. a mini stop light
c. silver dust
d. insert your own here or perhaps other might suggest things besides a man hole sized jumbo coin.

Just sewious.

Harris Deutsch
Laughologist and Nearly Normal Coin Guy

Agreed about the presentation.

I suppose if you acted like the passage was painful the audience might get tired of watching you twitch and wince... even if you sneak some ketchup onto the coins in the process.

It's a good routine. I don't understand how you are eliciting yawns with it.

Trio in Three is an English Penny, Half Dollar, and Mexican Centavo vanishing from the magicians hands and reappearing under two cards that the spectators touched. Each vanish goes one at a time, the last one goes under the spectators hands. Then the 2 copper coins change places with the silver coin in the magicians hands (but it can happen in the spectators hands if worked out right).

Perhaps the problem isn't the effect. It's the performer. I do not mean that the performer is doing anything wrong technically. I mean that perhaps HIS energy level isn't there, HIS interest isn't piqued and HIS audiences are reacting to that.

just a thought,
Jason

I don't agree with the analogy to Ambitious Card. The card comes to the top of the deck or maybe the bottom. If it goes into your wallet signed that's a whole separate trick in itself. It is repetitious and that's why people do different ending like card to wallet and the like. In some people's hands AC gets great audience reaction and in others a coins across does the same. I don't think there is anything inherently bad about either effect. Our style and approach to the effect is probably more important than the actual execution of it because what the spectator reacts to and remembers later is the measure of success. Personally, I've found layman react well to my coins across done with 4 silver dollars. It is the effect that I usually perform first if someone asks me to do magic because I always carry 4 coins with me in a tiny purse and I know from experience it will get a very strong reaction.

Jason,
I think you are absolutely right. If the audience detects that we are passionate about what we are doing (high energy) they will more than not get involved emotionally with the effect we are showing and once that happens you've got their attention (interested) and they care about what they are watching.

Adapt Roth's Coins across so that a spectator is involved from the beginning to the end. That is ,let the coins travel from your to their hand. The last one in a closed fist.

Second try making the routine progressive. Tamariz pulls up his sleeves, and even let spectators hold his wrists. Does not interfere with the technique but gives a sense of being more challenging every phase.

Oh, concerning seeing the same routines over and over may point out we see to many magicians instead of layaudiences. Come to think of it, last week I saw Armando Lucero do his "average" matrix. Standing ovation! From magicians!!!